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Court-Ordered Psychological Evaluations

-from Cary and McHenry, IL-

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Have you been charged with being unfit, domestic violence, drunk driving or drug abuse? Has the
court ordered you to get a psychological evaluation? Discover the secret to getting an evaluation that is free of
bias and fair to you!

The court-ordered psychological evaluation can be a critical part of the resolution of your domestic violence,
drunk driving or drug abuse case. If the results of your psychological evaluation turn-out to be detrimental to
your case, you may ask yourself, How did they come up with that? That is not me! Now the judge will probably throw
the book at me- it is just not fair!

How the Psychologist Draws his Conclusions

If you check out a psychologists idea of what qualities make up an emotionally healthy human being, you would
likely get a description of a theoretically perfect person. However, no one is perfect; after all, everyone has a
history that will reveal a certain amount of difficulty or problem experiences.

What is important, however, is that we learn from our mistakes and correct them. Since it is not necessary to be
perfect, then, it is important to be honest when undergoing your psychological assessment.

The truth is that psychologists and courts are not expecting you to be a perfect person, whether or not you have
been charged with a crime. Therefore, they do have important leeway when evaluating you as a defendant.

Usually, you will be asked to get a licensed clinical psychologist to provide his conclusions about you to the
court; these conclusions are usually based on his findings from several psychological tests. These tests are
scientifically-based, well researched and have strong relevance to the behavior which has caused you to be in
court, for example, alcoholism, drug abuse, sex abuse, domestic violence, uncontrolled anger etc.

After meeting with the psychologist and taking the tests, the psychologist will then review the results and ask
himself some fairly simple questions about them. For example, if the psychologist discovers negative and
conflicting information between what he gleans from his personal interview with you and the tests themselves, he
may immediately make a judgment hurting your case.

The problem with many personal psychological interviews is that the defendant is unaware of the personal biases
and opinions of the examining psychologist. This is almost impossible to prevent and, unfortunately, the results of
the psychological evaluation can be all over the map.

When administering tests, psychologists strive to be scientific and objective, but ultimately, they are asked to
give an opinion of what your future behavior is likely to be. Unfortunately, this opinion is sometimes heavily
contingent on what specific psychologist you get to do your evaluation.

This all-important opinion also relies on the way the psychologist interprets your test results, which can vary
all over the map, depending on which psychologist is doing the testing. In other words, different psychologists may
interpret the same test results in different ways.

It is crucial to be aware of different psychologists biases before choosing one to do your assessment. Also, not
unimportantly, criteria change about what is normal or healthy behavior and can depend to an important degree, upon
the social and psychological climate at the time.

For example, if you have had any drug problems, some psychologists may come to some very severe conclusions
which would hurt your case. However, the type of conclusions are left up to the interpretation of the specific
examining psychologist.

The old criterion was that any use of non-prescribed drugs would be just cause for concluding that your behavior
was seriously abnormal and dysfunctional. Now, there is more awareness about the degree of ones use of drugs versus
abuse.

For example, smoking marijuana a few times in the privacy of your home with no kids around, to some
psychologists, may not necessarily be grounds to conclude a defendant to be dysfunctional, criminally culpable or
unfit. However, others might draw the exact opposite conclusion.

There are varying degrees of different behavior in all of us. Psychologists are looking for their particular
standard of normal, dysfunctional or abnormal behavior and that can vary drastically. Before taking any
psychological evaluation, look at your background, values and experience of the prospective psychologist.